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Thiel's coming off a bit hypocritical. What was innovative about PayPal? Facebook? Apparently there was enough innovation there for Thiel to invest his time and
by sakopov 14y ago
Thiel's coming off a bit hypocritical. What was innovative about PayPal? Facebook? Apparently there was enough innovation there for Thiel to invest his time and money.
I think to non-technical people there is nothing innovative about Twitter, Facebook and most of online services offered today. To techies innovation is in the infrastructures these services are built on & sometimes made publicly available to others (ie Amazon).
- jameswilsterman 14y agoI don't think Thiel is arguing that his investments / companies are exceptions here. He is also not arguing that 'innovation doesn't occur at all'. He is arguing that innovation (while still very profitable for the founders and investors) does not necessarily imply societal gains in wellbeing. So today's innovations are not materially improving our quality of life in the way that the discovery of penicillin did. Twitter is fun and can be useful, but life might be much 'better' if instead we had access to cheap and fast jet packs (for example).